Photographer Sophia Hsin Documents Child Laborers in Bangladesh

This young girl spends her days picking shrimp heads in a Bangladeshi factory. All photos by Sophia Hsin.

Vancouver, Canada-based photographer Sophia Hsin recently traveled to Bangladesh with World Vision’s No Child for Sale campaign. Her goal: to document young laborers and raise awareness among Canadian consumers about how some products enter their food chain.

The photos from her trip do a brilliant job conveying the humanity of children forced into working at far too young an age, due to cultural norms and extenuating family circumstances.

Tanya works nights in a shrimp factory to support her disabled father and younger sister.

Creatively, this trip really made me realize the beauty of photography and how it gives me the ability to document stories and be a voice for people that need to be heard. Along the way, I also realized that it was less about me fulfilling my creative vision but about being a person that cared more than taking a great photo and walking away.

A boy working in a machine shop in Jessore, Bangladesh.

…these trips have given me a capacity for compassion and a boldness to talk about issues that seem better kept in the dark. The decision to go on this trip was to challenge myself and take on a project I believed in; knowing that I had to be prepared to be honest about my experience and have the courage to speak out. Now that I know about these things, it seems quite foolish to stay silent.

Thanks Sophia for showing those photographs. They are amazing and create awareness. It is so sad that so many kids in this world have to work to support their family and don’t even earn a fair vage. People should stop buying clothes made from children!

You know a large number of clothing brands do participate in this. Until you end their cooperation you’ll never see this end and even then most of these are sub-contractors who are overlooked by their own government. Encourage entrepreneurship, create new ethical businesses!